Hazrat Moulana Shah Maghsoud Sadegh Angha was a scientist, a philosopher, a poet, and one of the acclaimed Sufi masters of the 20th century.

He was born in Tehran, Iran in 1916. His father was Mazrat Mir Ghotbeddin Mohammad, also a greatly respected Sufi and scholar.

Maghsoud's first book of poetry was published when he was only fourteen years old.

He studied spirituality under the guidance of his father, while his academic pursuits led him to study at the University of Tehran. He wrote:

"I graduated from school and emerged with the customary body of education, but that education did not make me knowledgeable. Even then, I understood that words could not transfer the essence of their meanings from one individual to another, and that the human storage of memory was not a library of knowledge, even though I had learned many sayings, ideas, and beliefs of great people of all times, those were not my knowledge, but only quotations, narration."

Even recognizing the limitations of external education, he showed himself to be a talented student and, later, teacher.

He often quoted the Koran verse that says, "Do not follow whatever you have no knowledge of," suggesting that merely following a tradition or ritual is pointless if you haven't discovered its inner meaning.

In the 1960s and 70s, he oversaw the construction of Sufi Abaad, a complex of buildings that included a museum, library, and observatory. The materials used to create these buildings -- tiles, mirrors, hand-carved doors and windows -- were all created by Iranian artists and artisans.

Moulana Shah Maghsoud's writings ranged from poetry and treatises on Islam to philosophy, science, and medicine. His daughter, Dr. Seyedeh Nahid Angha, has been one of his primary translators.